With a 7% chance of survival, baby Christian and his family were faced with the harshest of possibilities, but with a lot of courage, support of family and friends, and talented medical staff, he pulled through.
We sat down with Sean Larkin who created the Team Christian campaign to raise funds and help the Grun family pay for all the rehabilitative care that Christian will need moving forward.
What is your campaign? What are you fundraising for?
Sean: In October 2013, Frank and Riley Grun gave birth to a beautiful son named Christian. By all appearances, he was born happy and healthy. But because he came two weeks early, he received a mandatory MRI. This test unexpectedly revealed a rare malformation in his brain, because of which he also suffered from cardiac failure and pulmonary issues.
Christian was given a 7% chance to live. He was rushed into brain surgery at 4 days old. His first three months of life were extremely difficult — he received two more brain surgeries, suffering a stroke during the second. But Christian is a strong little person – and with the support of incredible doctors and amazing parents, he is pulling through. But he does continue to suffer from vision and neurological issues which require frequent, and expensive, rehabilitation therapy.
When I found out two weeks ago that I was going to have my own son, I realized just how much I want our two boys to grow up wrestling and romping around together. Christian needs this rehab to become the person he is meant to be. His mom and dad exemplify the type of parent that I want to be.
Christian made it this far — now it’s our turn to help him and his family.
What is your progress so far?
Sean: Each of Christian’s rehabilitation therapy sessions costs $120. He will need three sessions per week for the next year. Our fundraising goal is 144 sessions ($17,280). We launched our campaign on Easter Sunday morning. We raised close to $4,500 in the first 48 hours. In the first three days, we’ve covered the cost of 47 sessions (4 months of rehabilitation).
Why did you choose CauseVox?
Sean: I work in digital strategy and website development for nonprofits. There are a number of crowd fundraising platforms to choose from. After a good bit of research, I selected CauseVox because of its ease of use, generous pricing, and great customer support.
I know that this might sound a little “pitchy,” but I’m thankful that the CauseVox team has developed a platform that allows everyday users of the Internet to quickly launch powerful crowd fundraising campaigns. CauseVox has removed the barriers that have traditionally held small organizations and individuals back in seeking the fundraising support they need.
What 2-3 lessons have you learned from running this campaign?
Sean: To be honest, most of what I’ve learned from this experience has nothing to do with technology, but that doesn’t mean that I take back any of the nice things I said above about CauseVox…
As someone who teaches online fundraising, this campaign reminded me of a few key concepts of online giving:
First, the credibility of a crowd fundraising campaign comes from the fact that the individuals asking for support are not themselves the intended recipients of that support. Frank and Riley Grun have been involved in this campaign, of course, they’ve shared family photos with us and have talked with us about Christian’s medical condition and needs. But they aren’t asking for support themselves. This campaign was motivated and created by their friends. The organic, authentic nature of this effort seems to resonate with supporters.
Second: Personalized appeals! I can’t stress this point strongly enough. We didn’t post this campaign site, hit “like” a bunch of times when sharing the link on Facebook, and hope that folks would stumble onto the site and give.
Christian’s father, Frank, is an active member of the Brazilian Jiu Jitsu community here in Portland, Oregon. He’s an attentive father and a great friend who’s gone out of his way to support me and others in the local community. So, we wove this story into our appeals on Facebook.
More importantly, as each of my friends on Facebook liked our campaign, I sent them private messages thanking them for sharing our campaign with their friends and reiterating how much it would mean to me and my future son for them to support Frank’s son. I asked them directly to give money (which is really, really hard for most of us), but then reminded them that their prayers and energy were an effective way to support Christian if they weren’t in a position to help out financially.
Finally, I think that this campaign has very tangible measures of success: Each rehabilitation therapy session costs $120. Each has an exponential impact on the rest of Christian’s life. Our supporters clearly understand the impact of their donations.
What are your hopes for the next week?
Sean: Frank and Riley Grun have an extraordinary amount on their plates. In addition to advocating for Christian’s ongoing medical treatment, they have two other young children to attend to. It’s been an exhausting 7 months for them.
So, honestly, I’d like for us to hit our fundraising goal in the next week so that we can take a serious financial burden off their plates and give them more time to focus on their children’s health and well being.
How can people help?
Sean: Consider donating to our campaign and I’ll trade you online fundraising tips! Seriously, if any of the points above about effective online fundraising have been helpful, please consider making a small donation to our campaign, or at least spreading the word. In return, if you have questions about personalizing your own fundraising efforts or using CauseVox, hit me up on Twitter and I’ll do the best I can to help out. There are so many challenges we face in the world, let’s help each other out.
CauseVox: Thank you so much, Sean!
For anyone reading this, you can help support Team Christian here. If you have any questions for Sean or this campaign, please email us at hello@causevox.com.
